


Dreamscape

by Dunloth



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, KakaIru Mini Bang 2020, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24885031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunloth/pseuds/Dunloth
Summary: Perhaps soulmates do exist, and it's true that you connect with them in your dreams, even if you forget everything when you wake up. Iruka thinks it would be nice, if it was true. Kakashi doesn't agree.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 48
Kudos: 126
Collections: KakaIru Mini Bang 2020





	1. That soulmate nonsense

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the KakaIru MiniBang 2020, with the theme Soulmates. I'm sorry I'm late with it.  
> Warning for Narutoverse-typical violence that might get a bit graphic in future chapters.

Iruka woke up another day with a feeling of vivid dreams vanishing away and leaving him slightly melancholic.

He was not sure when the strange dreams started. He had the feeling they had been with him since he was a kid, but they had been more frequent as he grew up. Some mornings he woke up immersed in the strangest most intense emotions, like he had been going through thrilling adventures while he was sleeping, like he lived a whole life in a different world. Sometimes his pillow was wet with tears when he awoke. Iruka only had slight whiffs of memories from his dreams, and only for a few seconds after waking up.

He wished he could grasp more of it when he was awake. The memories slipped away between his fingers, barely out of his reach, but the emotions remained. And those emotions told him that he really was missing something very special by not remembering those dreams.

Those days Iruka felt he was missing the memories of an essential part of his life.

Some days he remembered a little more, something about another person having an important role in his oneiric universe. But as hard as he tried, he wasn’t able to retain any memories of this person out of his dreams, only a feeling of their presence. A peculiar sentiment of not being alone. It was a warm feeling, one Iruka wouldn’t mind getting used to. But it never stayed for too long; it vanished soon after he woke up, with the last remains of his dreams.

It was happening more often lately, waking up yet another day feeling like he was leaving paradise to fall head first into the gray reality where he was lonely and overworked.

So, once more, Iruka got out from his bed and walked to the bathroom, stretching his sore neck and shoulders, his naked feet slapping slightly on the cold floor. He smiled, fondly, when his last conversation with Genma some days ago came to his mind.

“Oh, you’re having soulmate dreams? How cute.” Genma rested his chin on his joined hands, his elbows on the izakaya counter, in a slightly mocking gesture towards Iruka.

“What are you talking about?” Iruka smiled at his friend’s shenanigans.

“You know, destiny knocking on your door. Have you never heard about that stuff about your soulmate manifesting through your dreams before you meet?”

Iruka rolled his eyes. “Of course I have. But it doesn’t mean I think it’s true. Come on, Genma. You don’t believe that either. Or do you?” Now it was Iruka the one with the teasing ring to his words.

Of course Genma wouldn't believe in that soulmate nonsense, he must be just making fun of Iruka. They changed the subject and had a nice evening getting tipsy of sake and talking about all and nothing in particular, in the slightly cramped bar where the people around chatted animatedly and tried to forget the dangers of shinobi life. Genma was a good friend, surprisingly balanced for a jounin. Iruka felt lucky to have him around.

Those were Iruka’s early morning thoughts while he showered and ate a quick breakfast, got dressed and prepared to leave for his classes at the academy. This year’s graduation exams were the next day, after all—no time for musing about dreams and soulmate nonsense. Today would be Naruto’s last chance to learn how to make a bunshin if he wanted to pass tomorrow’s exam, and he would likely not be able to accomplish it—for the second year in a row. Iruka was worried enough. He braced himself for a long exhausting day.

After everything was ready, he tied his hair in front of the mirror with his favorite red hair tie, looking absently at his face, lost in thoughts about how the whole soulmate thing would be kind of nice if it was true. But reality was not the way one would want. It was just the way it was, with no place for childish dreams. Iruka took a last pensive look at his reflection, took a deep breath, grabbed his satchel and the bento box he prepared the previous night, and left for the Academy, ready to face a demanding day.

⁂

On a branch in a big oak tree deep in Fire country’s northern forests, Kakashi woke up with a start just before dawn, his heart racing. Only his years of experience sleeping on trees during ANBU missions kept him from falling from the branch and breaking his neck.

One of those dreams again. Kakashi silently cursed. That was the last thing he needed right now—this solo mission was complicated enough as it was, no need to add emotional hiccups to it. 

Kakashi rubbed his face, careful not to scratch it with his arm guards, and put on his Hound porcelain mask before silently jumping down to the forest ground. He tried to delete every remaining feelings coming from his fresh dreams. Their intensity would tune down fast enough, as usual.

He really wished the disturbing dreams would leave him alone. They always left him weak, overwhelmed with emotions he tried so hard to keep away from. As Tenzou used to say to him, half-serious, half-mocking, ‘ _Careful,_ _senpai_ _, or you might end up being human._ ’ Damn Tenzou.

Kakashi almost preferred his old nightmares. With them he at least had some way to cope, even if he was aware his coping mechanisms weren’t exactly healthy. But they felt familiar, like something he was able to control.

The dreams made Kakashi uneasy because they were a door to something he was not sure he could control, and he really wasn’t looking forward to following that path.

It was getting worse lately. It was happening most of the days.

For a normal person, soulmate dreams vanished without a trace until they would meet that person in real life.

Not for Kakashi. Kakashi was not a normal person in any sense of the definition, but the least normal part of himself was the sharingan that allowed him to record experiences, and play them later. Including dreams.

Kakashi remembered everything about his dreams, and they were haunting him. Because something in those dreams was not right.


	2. Things Iruka shouldn’t know about

There is a feeling of urgency, running, running, dashing like a shadow, silent, smooth. There’s controlled breathing, the sound of the wind brushing around because of the speed. It’s dark, the moon is just a sliver, low in the sky, a sky that is mostly hidden behind the tree tops. 

_Where am I? What is this?_ Iruka thinks, confused.

_This is not me._

Iruka feels strange. He’s moving, running at top speed through the tree branches of a forest at night, but Iruka is not the one doing the moving.

The world around is strange, and Iruka’s body is not his body. 

_Oh, this is a dream. I’m dreaming I’m another person._

It all makes more sense now, in that weird way things make sense when one is dreaming.

But this feels too real to be a dream, doesn’t it? Everything is too defined, too solid. Too similar to reality.

In this dream Iruka is looking through the eyes of another. He sees what they see, hears what they hear. Feels the cold wind on a face that is not his face.

_I’m sharing someone’s senses. I’m a guest in someone else’s body._

That guess is confirmed when Iruka’s host foot slips on one of their jumps and their ankle bends a bit too much. A lash of pain pierces Iruka. 

_So I’m sharing the pain too. I hope this person doesn't get injured tonight_.

Iruka would like to move his head around, to see a bit more of the body he’s sharing, of their surroundings, but he’s not the one in control. He has to look at what his host wants to look.

Not that there’s too much light to see things around, anyway.

A whisper comes from one of the shadows to his left, which Iruka thought were just forest shadows. “Enemy at 11.”

Iruka’s host turns a little to the left. After a minute of running in that direction, they get close to a clearing in the trees with a fire illuminating the place. Iruka’s bearer jumps down to the floor, with three other shadows, and Iruka realizes there’s people around them, and they wear Konoha ANBU masks and uniforms. 

The little he can see of his host’s body seems to be wearing ANBU gear too. Only now Iruka realizes his vision is framed inside what looks like eye-slits in a mask.

And that he’s looking through one eye only.

Ten meters in front of them there’s a campfire with six people scattered around, unaware of the intruders. Some of them wear forehead protectors with missing-nin scratched plates from Mist.

Iruka is almost blinded by a bright white-blue light. A sizzling and chirping sound he’d never heard before is coming from the same place as the light, right in front of him, from the place where he feels his right hand is tickling.

After that, everything happens too quickly for Iruka to make total sense of it. There’s movement, pain, confusing sounds and sensations. 

Iruka has been in fights before, but none as violent and fast as this one. If he was not dreaming his stomach would be rebelling.

The world has a strange red tint, strange colors. Things happen like time is distorted—too fast one moment, slow motion the next one. It’s unsettling.

When everything ends, Iruka’s host speaks to give some orders to the survivors—only the four Konoha ANBU are standing—and passes out. 

Iruka wakes up the moment his host goes black, and for a couple of seconds he wonders what the hell has just happened. Then he forgets everything as he gets fully awake and his conscious memories of the dream go away forever, leaving teen Iruka in an unsettled mood for the rest of his day.

⁂

The next time Iruka dreams of being inside his lethal ANBU host he remembers everything from his first dream of them. All those memories locked away while Iruka’s awake are there at his reach when he’s dreaming these strange second life dreams. 

This dream is similar to the first one—a disturbing ANBU mission in the darkest hour of night, violent and dangerous. They are not in the woods this time, but inside a big house, a traditional wooden house with strong black wood beams and expensive looking carved paper walls, that looks like it belongs to some minor noble. There are shinobi guards, and civilian servants, and the lord’s family.

This time Iruka is less confused and gets a better impression of the fight; he gets to realize his carrier’s chirping hand is a deadly weapon that kills by getting rammed into their victim’s chest. That’s how the lady of the house dies, she is the mission target tonight. It’s awful and gross—but ANBU are assassins, this is what they do. There’s a reason only the strongest, hardest shinobi get into ANBU.

Iruka is glad he’s not skilled enough to have been considered as an ANBU candidate. It’s a life that would have crushed his soul.

⁂

After several of these dreams, Iruka is even more sure he would’ve lost his sanity in ANBU. It’s hard enough to stand the things he’s experiencing as a witness. The things he’s seen… If he wasn’t already dreaming he would have nightmares about them.

 _‘Hound-_ _taichou_ _’_ , the other ANBU call Iruka’s host—the teammates that are around more often, the one in the Cat mask, Tenzou, and the little one they call Weasel. There's also Ghost, a kunoichi with long purple hair. Iruka can feel their deep respect for their captain. For what Iruka’s seen, Hound deserves that respect.

The first time Hound is severely injured Iruka feels all their pain. The shock is so big that Iruka wakes up right then with a scream, luckily forgetting it all again almost immediately—but the disturbing feeling of being gutted lingers for a good while.

But Iruka’s biggest shock happens the first time Hound fully uses his left eye, the eye Iruka thought was not there. The world changes into an alien palette of colors he had never seen before. Iruka feels a savage chakra drain, feels that eye pulling at Hound’s chakra reserves like a thirsty vampire. Iruka is confused, dizzy, but he catches a forbidden word coming from the terrified enemies around, _sharingan_ , and suddenly it all makes sense.

So, Iruka’s host must be a forgotten Uchiha, a survivor hidden in the ranks of ANBU, secluded from the people of Konoha. Iruka feels deeply sorry for them.

Iruka never thought he would get to learn how it feels like to use a sharingan. It’s a deeply disturbing feeling, and the chakra drain is painful and almost unbearable; but Iruka gets used to the feeling after a couple of times of having to retire from the dream because he can’t take it.

After that, Iruka improves his resistance to pain, and he perfects his ability to get away of the dream only when it gets too bad. He feels bad for leaving Hound behind when that happens. He would like to be able to get them away of the pain too, but he can’t. Iruka feels like a traitor when he does that, even if he can’t help his ANBU in any way by staying and suffering with them. Sometimes he does it anyway. After all, for Iruka these are only dreams. For some poor dutiful shinobi this is their shitty life. The least Iruka can do is staying with them—even if this person is not real. Iruka feels better this way.

⁂

Iruka noticed Hound is very young, mostly because their voice sounds high pitched, like a female, or a young teen’s voice. Iruka also noticed they are male (or at least they have male bits). Iruka was curious about this—if he’s going to dream of his imaginary potential soulmate he thinks he deserves to know their gender, at least. Iruka can’t control his host’s movements, and can’t do something so simple as moving a hand to cup their crotch and feel what’s there, to dissipate his doubts about Hound’s genitals, but he gets some clear sensory inputs that confirm what kind of organs are there. Iruka gets direct confirmation the first time Hound has to stop to pee during one of Iruka’s visits. Also, their teammates address Hound as ‘he’.

Iruka feels uncomfortable intruding into his ANBU’s privacy like this, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s sure that if he had his own body he would be blushing dark red.

Then Iruka remembers he’s only dreaming and nothing of this is real, _this person is not real_ , and he feels less embarrassed and guilty.

⁂

Iruka’s dreams go on like this for years, and he gets to know Hound quite well, and to see him grow older into his late teens. Iruka goes with him through one grueling mission after another, and little else. There are some moments when Iruka is there and Hound is not on a mission, but they can be counted with one hand. Looks like ANBU is all there is in Hound’s life. 

Those little glimpses into Hound’s life, with him out of his ANBU gear, trigger an alarm in Iruka’s head. As far as he can see, Hound doesn’t interact much with people out of his missions, but one day Iruka gets shocked until the point he almost leaves the dream, when someone runs into Hound as he’s walking Konoha’s main street, his hands in the pockets of his regular jounin pants. 

The person who tackles Hound and playfully locks an arm around his neck, with the biggest grin Iruka has seen, is someone Iruka knows in real life: Maito Gai.

Only, he’s like a smaller, younger version of Maito Gai. He definitely looks like a teen.

Iruka feels deeply unsettled. This is only a dream, about an imaginary ANBU in an unreal world. What is a person from his real life doing there? And of any person that Iruka knows, it had to be Maito Gai? Iruka’s not even close to him.

Iruka’s wariness multiplies by ten when Genma and Raidou appear in one of his dreams too, trying to invite Hound to have a drink with them. Iruka knows Genma pretty well, he’s known him for years. And this looks exactly like the real Genma when he was 21. Iruka knows his exact age, because he recognizes the clothes his friend wears: that green jumper that was Genma’s favorite, that he wore compulsively for more than a year. Iruka remembers ruining it after getting sick in the party Genma threw for him when Iruka made chuunin at 16.

Iruka realizes two things:

It looks like his dreams are displaced several years to the past. Genma is six years older than Iruka, so if Genma is 21 in Iruka’s dreams, then Iruka himself is 15 in that timeline. Iruka was not too far away from Genma at that time. Will Iruka see himself in one of the dreams?

The second thing Iruka realizes is that the dreams show too much detailed information about real life facts that happened when Iruka was not present. These are all things Iruka shouldn’t know about, but his dreams show even small details of them.

Iruka starts to think he might be dreaming about things that happened for good in the real world.

His ANBU might be a real person.

For better or worse, every time Iruka wakes up he leaves behind this parallel life and all his thoughts about it. But a feeling of loss lingers, like there’s something important Iruka is missing when he’s awake. He can’t shake this feeling away.


	3. A sense of connection

Kakashi’s dreams followed a similar path to Iruka’s dreams. He was sixteen the first time he had a dream where he found himself looking at the world through the eyes of a young teacher in Konoha’s Shinobi Academy, who did extra hours as a desk shinobi in the mission room. In those dreams, Kakashi was trapped in a body he couldn’t control, living a mostly boring parallel life.

It could be worse, Kakashi thought. At least no one tried to kill him in these dreams, and he didn’t have to kill anyone. No one died around. It was refreshing compared to Kakashi’s everyday life at ANBU—and he liked being around this person.

Kakashi’s host had an incredible amount of interactions with other people, that left Kakashi’s social batteries exhausted even if he was not the one doing the talking. It only took a couple of dreaming sessions for Kakashi to learn that his host was Umino Iruka, valued chuunin school-teacher and the terror of jounin who didn’t properly fill their mission reports.

Kakashi knew one Umino Iruka in real life, but he was a kid, still a pre-genin at the shinobi academy, and a troublemaker at that. Kakashi doubted he got to graduate at all. As little as Kakashi knew about that kid, real life Umino Iruka didn’t feel like shinobi material. Too weak, and too unruly. Kakashi had a hard time imagining that scoundrel as the proper Iruka-sensei he found in his dreams, exuding Will of Fire through all his pores.

⁂

As Kakashi got older, he kept dreaming about Iruka through the years. Kakashi noticed that the scenes of Iruka’s life he was seeing in his dreams did not follow a chronological order. Though he mostly dreamed of twenty-something Iruka as a teacher in Konoha’s academy, he sometimes dreamed of a younger Iruka.

And not all was happiness and dullness in the life of Umino Iruka. One night when Kakashi was seventeen, he lived through his dreams of Iruka a moment in time that was part of Kakashi’s own personal nightmares. When this dream started, Kakashi found himself immersed in the hellscape that was Konoha on the night of the Kyuubi attack, two years before. 

Kakashi experienced again some of the darkest hours of his life, but this time he did it through the eyes of a terrified ten-year-old kid who saw his parents die trying to protect him and Konoha. 

After the dream ended, Kakashi went to his bunk in the ANBU quarters and stayed there for three days, isolated from everything around, afraid to sleep, regressing to those black out days after Minato-sensei died. 

Then these dark days passed and Kakashi went back to happier dreams with Iruka—but the sharingan remembered it all.

⁂

And so, life went on for Iruka, and for Kakashi. They never interacted out of their dreams. Well, they didn’t really interact in their dreams either, but they got to know each other profoundly and to weave a deep connection while the dreams lasted.

For instance, Kakashi learned that Iruka loved ramen and the color red, that his patience with kids was almost infinite, but his patience with adults not so much—especially with shinobi that tried to take advantage of their rank. Kakashi learned that Iruka had a temper, and let it run now and then, but never to bully, and he was as quick to amend his mistakes and apologize as he was quick to jump and bellow around. Iruka didn’t hold grudges. Kakashi learned which books Iruka enjoyed, that he loved relaxing in the hot springs and treated himself to it every once in a while, especially if he had something to celebrate, and a thousand other little facts about Iruka.

Kakashi sometimes imagined himself surprising Iruka with some of the things he knew Iruka loved. He pictured Iruka getting home after a long workday, with a half-scraped chewing gum in his sleeve, or one of his hair bangs slightly shorter than usual, or a blotch of glitter in his messenger bag—Iruka’s little hellions were very creative when they wanted. He imagined Iruka tiredly removing his sandals at the door and neatly hanging his bag and vest in their hooks in the wall, and getting into the kitchen, stretching his tired back muscles. Then Iruka would see the bento box nicely wrapped in a red cloth with a cheerful pattern of little shuriken, and the last book in his favorite adventure series, and he would smile a fond smile, thinking of the person who put those gifts there for him.

 _Ah, to be that person for Iruka, that would really be so nice,_ Kakashi thought. He used to bask for a moment in similar silly thoughts. Then he remembered those things would never happen and went back to reality, focused again on not dying in whatever his current ANBU mission was.

⁂

On his side, Iruka learned that Kakashi’s sense of duty and willingness to sacrifice for Konoha were a bottomless pit. He spread death around in his missions, but not a single time Iruka watched him being cruel to their targets. He also cared for his teammates and put himself in harm’s way to protect them. He had a pack of eight ninken as summons, and loved them like family, and spoiled them a bit when no one was around to see it. The only self-indulgence Kakashi seemed to have was reading every single trashy novel written by Jiraiya-sama. Iruka had to learn some pages of those books by heart.

In his everyday life, Iruka was not aware of the existence of his dream world partner. He just had that feeling that there was a part of himself that was waiting for something important to happen, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. 

However, when Iruka got asleep and entered his dreamscape, his world was centered around ANBU captain Hound, too young elite shinobi and Konoha’s best, who lived a dangerous, harsh life and knew very little about happiness. Through the years, Iruka came to be very fond of him, and to be convinced he was somehow real, even if he seemed to exist in an alternative Konoha from seven years ago. Of course, Iruka never heard of ANBU Hound in his real life, but that was how things worked—to be ANBU meant to live in the shadows, hidden away from the rest of the people in Konoha. 

Perhaps Iruka knew the real Hound, the one without the mask. But at this point Iruka had came to terms with the idea that he would never get to know who Hound was.

Too late, and with no hopes of getting anywhere with it, one night half-way through a dream, while Hound lied in a hospital bed trying to recover from chakra exhaustion—a sensation Iruka learned too well after he came into Hound’s life—, Iruka realized he had feelings for a person he would never meet in real life, and who probably was his soulmate.

That was one of the days he woke up crying and in a melancholic mood that didn’t go away for the rest of his day.

⁂

Kakashi’s side was different. He was totally aware of what he was missing. He still was reluctant to admit those dreams meant Iruka was his soulmate, but after years of vivid dreams he also had come to know everything about Iruka and to feel a deep fondness for him, and a sense of connection. The Iruka in Kakashi’s dreamscape was a wonderful person who brightened Kakashi’s dark life whenever he thought of him.

The not so bright part of it, and with Kakashi’s luck there always had to be one, was that Kakashi’s Iruka did not exist in real life. There was this temporal mismatch—real-world Iruka was a kid, and so different from dream-world Iruka that it was not even funny. He couldn’t possibly be the same person Kakashi met in his dreamscape.

Fate had played yet another cruel trick with Kakashi. His soulmate didn’t even exist in the same timeline and universe than him.

Kakashi gave up his hopes about Iruka and accepted the idea that the closest he was going to be to a significant relationship with his soulmate was the time he spent intruding into dreamscape Iruka’s life, uninvited, unwanted, unknown. It would have to be enough.

The turning point for Kakashi came one night during one of his dreams, watching how Iruka was trying to help Minato-sensei’s son Naruto with his abysmally bad bunshin jutsu. In this dream world Naruto was twelve, not five like the actual Naruto in Kakashi’s reality—but he was still shunned the same by most of Konoha’s people.

Not by Iruka. Iruka cared for him, and seemed determined to make Naruto pass his graduation exam by sheer stubbornness, even if it was clear that the kid was a dead last and had serious issues controlling his chakra. Iruka would not let him fall behind, would not accept he was a lost case.

That was the moment Kakashi realized he had fallen hopelessly in love with this man that only existed in his personal dreamscape, with this person that would stand in the way of fate itself, in the way of all of Konoha, to side with an orphan kid that deserved better.


	4. A disturbing thought, a revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for descriptions of sexy times. Nothing too graphic, but fic rating went up, just in case.

Experiencing arousal through a body that isn’t one’s own body is very disturbing, and also intense, Kakashi discovered.

It’s not like Iruka was obsessed with sex, but as most teen boys he masturbated a healthy amount of times. It was only statistically predictable that Kakashi was there dreaming of him during some of those times. 

The first time it happened, Kakashi was so shocked that he left the dream the moment Iruka started to touch himself, in the quiet of his bedroom. Kakashi knew this was different from the times he was there with Iruka when he showered or bathed, or he had to use the bathroom. Those times Kakashi just did the equivalent of respectfully looking another way—even if he couldn’t really do that physically, but he could do a sort of temporary mental escape for a couple of minutes, focusing his thoughts on some other matter, like reciting the ANBU regulations, calculating poison amounts for a person, going through hand-sign sequences for complicated jutsu, or other similar tricks.

This was different. Staying there while Iruka did this was so many ways of wrong. It was stalking, invading Iruka’s intimacy in an unforgivable way.

And yet, the second time it happened, Kakashi stayed for a little longer than he should have, fascinated by the sensations and curious about them, until his conscience reminded him how wrong this was, and he left the dream—but Iruka’s incipient arousal went back with Kakashi to his reality. He finished what Iruka unknowingly started, and jerked off in his bathroom, thinking of Iruka.

This was a barrier Kakashi wasn't going to break. At the beginning it was mostly a matter of curiosity, and of Kakashi’s libido doing what it was programmed to do—but as years went by and Kakashi’s connection to Iruka grew deeper it became increasingly difficult to step back from those scenarios. Kakashi kept doing it anyway. He didn’t have the right to be there uninvited, to violate Iruka’s intimacy like that.

By the time Kakashi fully accepted he was in love with Iruka, leaving the dreams whenever they started to get intimate had become excruciating.

Kakashi accepted the fact that he would never get to know how it would feel to have sex with Iruka, or through Iruka, and it hurt, but it was the way things were.

⁂

Then, one fine day, Kakashi had a disturbing thought, a revelation.

If Iruka was his soulmate, if Kakashi dreamed of being him, then it had to be like that the other way around too.

That is, Iruka too dreamed of Kakashi and was a guest inside him during part of Kakashi’s actual experiences.

Kakashi mentally hit himself. How had he never thought of that? It was logical; it was obvious now that he had realized about it. 

From the moment of this epiphany, Kakashi entered an almost constant state of paranoia. At random times of his day, he wondered if Iruka would be there. Kakashi had no way to know. 

He was on leave those days, recovering from some serious injuries. So, as he would be stranded in Konoha for another two weeks at least, he had enough free time to spend endless hours at Konoha’s library investigating every available book about soulmates and their dynamics. There wasn’t much information about it, as the whole soulmates matter wasn't scientifically accepted. If Kakashi hadn’t been experiencing it first-hand for years he also would have laughed at the concept, but he knew better now.

He didn’t find any useful information. All the explanations he found were inaccurate, not even getting right the basics of inhabiting the body of one’s soulmate during the dreams. The most accurate those books got was as saying that soulmates connected through their dreamscapes, and forgot everything when they woke up, until they met again in real life and felt like they knew each other, still not remembering the details of their dreams, but connecting instantly and living happily ever after—another affirmation Kakashi was skeptical about. Knowing each other intimately didn’t guarantee that a couple would get on well, but at least Kakashi guessed soulmates had a better chance that other couples. He still had trouble accepting the fate component of his situation, but at least he accepted that he was experiencing part of another person’s life—even if that person didn’t exist in this universe. 

There were still many things Kakashi didn’t understand about his situation, but he was sure of one thing: this soulmate thing had gone wrong for him, and he would never meet his soulmate in the real world.

⁂

In the end, Kakashi came to terms with the unsettling thought of not knowing if Iruka was peeking through his eyes or not at any given moment of time. At random situations of his everyday life, Kakashi found himself wondering, _What would Iruka think of this?_ Sometimes he looked at things and had thoughts like _Iruka would like this,_ or _Iruka would laugh at this_. At times, it was oddly comforting, like he was'n alone.

Kakashi found himself regretting the violence in his ANBU missions, regretting that he was exposing Iruka to it. He guessed Iruka probably thought his soulmate was a ruthless killer, and a monster. He would have liked to have a nicer life to show to Iruka—to be someone less dark, more lovable, not a soulless tool of Konoha, which only existed to do the dirty work that normal people couldn’t stand to do.

He felt sorry for Iruka, who was a wonderful luminous person who didn’t deserve to be paired with someone like Kakashi, destined to have an ugly life and die young, leaving behind nothing but a death toll and a list of completed missions. No one would remember Kakashi for anything good.

Until that moment, Kakashi had felt that fate had been cruel to him for pairing him to someone who was out of his reach. Now he felt that the real victim of this arrangement wasn't him, but Iruka. Kakashi at least had gotten some nice moments to lighten his life. Iruka had only gotten death and pain.

Kakashi could only hope that Iruka wasn't dreaming of him, but of another, better person in his own world.

⁂

Once assumed this thing worked both ways, Kakashi couldn’t help it. He started to think of Iruka being there when Kakashi had his own self-provided sexy times.

This wasn't abusing Iruka’s confidence, violating his intimacy. Kakashi’s mind while he got off was only his. His fantasies were free to have Iruka in them if this was what he wanted—and he wanted him, he needed him. 

So, in his fantasies Kakashi started to complete the interrupted scenes of Iruka masturbating. He imagined that he stayed until Iruka reached his completion, that he was feeling what Iruka felt, that his own hands giving him pleasure were Iruka’s hands.

What was even more arousing was the thought of Iruka perhaps being there, hosted in Kakashi’s body, watching him getting off, feeling what he felt, as part of his own dreams.

Sometimes when Kakashi reached his orgasm he moaned a single word that meant a world to him, _Iruka,_ as he came down to reality from cumming hard, his overloaded senses still ringing with pleasure. 

He knew this was an anomaly in the soulmate system of the world. What would happen if Iruka was there with him and he heard him saying his name? What would happen if he managed to communicate with Iruka inside one of their dreams? No one was supposed to remember the dreams when they were awake. Perhaps the very fabric of space and time would rip if they managed to make such a connection, such a bridge between two worlds that should remain hermetic.

Perhaps the reality would blow up, but Kakashi wished Iruka would be there and hear him say his name. If this was the only way they would touch each other, it would be worth it.

Unluckily for Kakashi, or perhaps luckily for him and everyone else in his universe, the fabric of reality was safe, because Iruka also felt he was intruding when Hound locked himself up in his room in the ANBU quarters to have some intimate time. Iruka too left from his dreams at that point and never got to hear Hound’s voice saying his name with despair. 


	5. His own reflection

The only hint that Kakashi managed to get with time about when they were expected to be dreaming of each other, is that it looked like he was present in the most intense moments of Iruka's life, and probably for Iruka it was the same.

Kakashi didn’t want to think what that meant for poor Iruka, if he had to live all the shitty moments in Kakashi’s life, which were not few. Kakashi wouldn’t know how far back in time their dream connection spanned, but he knew he was there the night of the Kyuubi, when Iruka was ten. Was Iruka there with him when Kakashi’s father killed himself and Kakashi found him? When Obito died in Kakashi’s place? When Rin threw herself in the way of his chidori? Not counting the worse of Kakashi’s ANBU missions, some of which had been literal hell.

In fact Iruka had been there with him through most of those awful moments, and some more. Iruka felt this was too much suffering for a single person, and even worse, for a child. Hound was too young when those things happened. Iruka would’ve liked to help Hound, but he couldn’t, he could only be there with him anonymously in his dreams. Iruka watched Kakashi break down and get up again every single time. Kakashi was amazing, someone so resilient, and who managed to somehow keep his heart in the right place after going through so much suffering.

Iruka loved him still more because of that. More than once, Iruka imagined himself trying to take Hound away from ANBU, bringing him back to something like a normal life. Hound needed someone who cared for him. He was always the one caring for everyone else, for his teammates, for the whole of Konoha. It was time he received back a part of everything he’d given.

⁂

There is one special moment during their dreams when a hole between the worlds almost opens. Again, it’s one of those important moments in the life of Hound, and also in Konoha’s story.

Iruka joins Hound before dawn, when a bird sent by the Hokage taps on Hound’s window and wakes him up. He’s being summoned to the Hokage Tower for an urgent mission.

Less than five minutes later, Hound gets to the Tower roof and meets the rest of team Ro, except Weasel. They all bend one knee and wait for Sarutobi Hiruzen's orders. The Hokage starts speaking, and it all clicks in Iruka’s head.

This is the night of the Uchiha massacre.

Iruka is nervous, he’s not sure he should be there, learning all that restricted information. He tries to ignore some of the things he’s hearing, but it’s almost impossible. Yet he just can’t get away from the dream, he needs to know more.

At last, Hound’s team leave the Hokage tower and dash towards the Uchiha district. The gates of the compound are wide open, there are no guards. Hound’s team run inside.

Iruka takes in the horrific sight. There are dead bodies spread around in the streets, laying on pools of blood. There are corpses inside the houses around, too. Some ANBU are already there, inspecting the place, looking for survivors. Iruka knows they will only find one.

“To the clan head house,” Hound says. They all head there.

There are more corpses in the main house, including those of the clan leaders, Fugaku and Mikoto, laying side by side.

“Taichou,” Ghost calls, kneeling by another body on the tatami floor. It’s a small body, just a child. “This one’s alive.”

Hound runs there and helps Ghost checking the kid for injuries. “He’s unharmed. Take him to the hospital, quick. Tenzou,” Hound turns around, Ghost is already gone before he ends the movement, “tell the Hokage we found a survivor, Fugaku-san’s second son.”

Cat nods and leaves with a flicker. Hound stays and helps the other ANBU finish the search. They don’t find anyone else alive. 

Iruka already knew they wouldn’t. A tiny part of him was somehow expecting that this time something could be different, someone else could have survived—but he’s just witnessing something that happened in the way it happened. Dreams can’t change the things that have already happened, nor the ones that are fated to happen.

The last part of the ANBU task is the worst: they gather all the corpses and seal them into scrolls, to be taken to the ANBU morgue. There aren’t enough scrolls for all the dead bodies, so they have to use about thirty standard black body bags and carry them one by one to the morgue. It takes the best part of the day.

By the time Hound is dismissed and gets back to his room the sun has already set. Iruka feels the heaviness in his limbs, the tiredness. This mission has been quite different from the usual ANBU missions; Iruka can feel Hound is distressed, in the way he moves, he breathes.

As soon as Hound closes the door behind him and leaves the rest of the world outside, he leans on the door and slides to the floor, and stays there for a long time, hugging himself.

After what feels like half an hour, he stands and goes to the bathroom, without caring to remove his sandals or armor.

Hound does something he hasn’t done in all the years Iruka has been dreaming of him. He walks to the sink, stops in front of the mirror, and looks at his own reflection.

Iruka gets a good look at his soulmate for the first time.

He takes in the way the ANBU sleeveless top reveals Hound’s lean chest, his muscled shoulders and arms, the high gloves and arm guards starting above the elbows. His neck is slender but strong. His hair is silver, spiking wild around his head. Iruka didn’t know his skin was so pale—how could he know? Hound almost always moved in the dark when Iruka was with him.

Hound’s mask honors his codename. Iruka memorizes its lines and shapes. This is all he’s going to have to remember him.

Hound moves. Slowly, he raises a gloved hand to his painted mask, and removes it.

Iruka holds his proverbial breath. His own heart must be beating like a mad drum, but he can’t feel it.

When Hound removes the mask, Iruka sees there’s another mask underneath, this one made of dark fabric, covering Hound’s face up to his nose, revealing a dark grey eye and a red and black one, bisected by a vertical scar, drowning in a deep sorrow.

Hound is Hatake Kakashi.

Iruka only has a second to assimilate this realization. Then Kakashi moves at ANBU speed and punches the mirror, shattering it in a million pieces, destroying his reflection, his own hand and half of the wall tiles, and passing out from the pain.

Iruka wakes up in his own world and forgets what’s just happened.


	6. A measure of peace

_Iruka, are you there?_

Kakashi was dying to speak those words out loud, to reach out, to feel Iruka there, with him, and break the cruel gap between them. 

Instead, he just stood in front of the mirror, unable to speak, looking at his desolated face returning his stare, his sharingan activated, the three connected black dots of the mangekyou slowly spinning.

Since Rin died, Kakashi couldn’t stand looking at himself anymore; and today his own image haunted him even more, after another huge failure, after letting Itachi slip from his grasp and sink so deep into the darkness.

_What have I done? How didn’t I see this coming?_

It was too much. His sharingan throbbed painfully—Kakashi could feel it was about to start bleeding. But his physical pain couldn’t compare to the anguish he felt.

He couldn’t take it any more.

His hand moved almost by itself, hitting his mirror image into oblivion. The shards of the broken mirror dug into his knuckles, the bones broke, and he finally felt something stronger than his guilt and distress. The intense pain made him lose consciousness.

When Kakashi came back he stood, fighting the pain, and spent the next hour cleaning the broken glass and the blood in his bathroom. He managed not to pass out again before going to get his hand taken care of by one of the ANBU med nins that could be found on shift at any time of day or night in the ANBU infirmary two stories below his room.

The wall tiles remained broken until he moved away from the ANBU quarters years later.

⁂

Iruka of course didn’t remember this dream, but he was in a strange mood through the following day, wondering why he felt that unsettled.

The next time Iruka slipped into Hound’s world in his dreams he remembered it perfectly. It was a new experience, knowing that this faceless elite ninja he inhabited was the annoying, laid back jonin that sometimes exchanged some friendly words with him in the missions room. Iruka had suspected the Copy Nin had been ANBU, it was something generally accepted through the gossip mill. But it was a different thing to live through the confirmation of it.

Now a lot of things made better sense. The way Hatake Kakashi always seemed so detached and kept everyone at arm’s length; the way he had given Iruka advice about Naruto when he’d started teaching him, full of doubts about being able to deal with the Kyuubi vessel; and the way Kakashi seemed to protect Naruto from the shadows.

But there was one disturbing thing about that. What about Kakashi and Iruka’s interactions? Weren’t soulmates supposed to _feel_ something when they were close to each other for the first time?

Something was wrong in Iruka’s soulmate bond. He felt it in his core.

Also, Iruka never heard about any temporal mismatch between soulmates. Well, it wasn’t that soulmate lore was based on scientific facts, but no one ever said anything about soulmate dreams being displaced in time. Yet the Hound in Iruka’s dreams—no, the Kakashi, was clearly several years younger than real life Kakashi. Seven years, according to Iruka's observations.

It didn’t make sense, Iruka thought while he witnessed yet another one of Hound’s thrilling missions and got lost into the sensations.

⁂

Was the future Kakashi saw in his dreams written in stone? He didn’t have enough information to say so, but everything pointed in that direction—soulmate dreams were intended for people who couldn’t do a damn thing with the life lessons they received in their dreams, because they forgot everything when they woke up.

However, a thing happened some time ago that shattered Kakashi’s preconceptions about destiny and his dreams.

It was a warm spring night; team Ro was still complete, Kakashi was seventeen and enjoying two full free days between missions, a rare luxury. That night Kakashi dreamed of Iruka as a freshly graduated genin.

Iruka was celebrating his new status as a real ninja, with a last pranking outburst on the stone faces of the Hokage Monument before starting his new and responsible shinobi life. Kakashi could feel some uncomfortable splashes of colorful drying paint on Iruka’s exposed skin on his arms, and a smidgen of it in his cheek. Iruka rubbed at it, trying to remove it, and only managing to spread it more. He gave up with a laugh, and kept on walking towards the old shrine on top of the Monument hill.

Kakashi had been in that shrine with Iruka before. It was a place that Iruka seemed to like. Kakashi had also been there in his own reality, looking for a quiet place to relax and read for a while, undisturbed. That place reminded him of Iruka, and made him feel a measure of peace. It was supposed to be a deeply spiritual place, with an ancient altar consecrated to the mountain god, surrounded by sporadic offerings and papers with prayers, mostly from Konoha’s civilian people. Shinobi in general were not especially religious, but many of them were superstitious, so some of the prayer notes had seals, or faint chakra signatures attached to them.

Iruka huffed as he climbed the long mossy stairs that led to the shrine. A little past the big red wood torii gate that welcomed the shrine visitors, he stumbled on a step tile that wasn’t properly seated. The tile was loose and moved to the side when Iruka kicked it, revealing a gap under it. The sunlight filtering through the dense trees above revealed something white and smooth inside the hole.

Iruka crouched and moved the tile all the way aside, uncovering the object below: it was a porcelain mask—an ANBU mask. Iruka reached for it.

Kakashi froze when he recognized without a hint of doubt the mask in Iruka’s too young hands. It was his own Hound mask.

“Wow,” Iruka said out loud, amazed. He turned the mask around, appreciating it. Then he seemed to hesitate, his hands shaking a little. After a little pause he left the mask back in the hole in the ground. Then he huffed and took the mask again.

Kakashi’s mind was racing, but he recognized Iruka’s indecisiveness. Finding an ANBU mask was a rare and exciting event for a genin, but taking it home could get Iruka in trouble, if someone found out—ANBU stuff was taboo for people out of the organization. So Kakashi could imagine the mind processes inside Iruka’s head right then, his unruly part fighting his sensible one.

Finally Iruka’s little inner angel and demon seemed to reach an agreement. Iruka turned the mask around and started fiddling with the red thin cord attached to the sides of it, the one that held the mask in its place over its owner’s face, with the help of some chakra. After some struggling and mumbling, Iruka managed to remove the string from the mask without breaking it. With a satisfied “Yes!” Iruka wound the red thread around his wrist, and admired it for a second. Then he gave a last look at the mask, slid his fingers over it, feeling its smoothness, the relief of the layers of bright lacquered paint, and reverently put it back down in the ground hole. He restored the tile in its place, trying to make it fit with the other tiles so no one else would stumble on it.

Iruka stood up, shaking the dirt from his hands, and started walking up the stairs again, with bouncy steps.

Kakashi woke up to the sound of crickets outside his window and a sweet smelling breeze, right when Iruka was bowing respectfully in front of the shrine altar.

After that night, Kakashi stopped dreaming of Iruka.


	7. Missing Iruka

Kakashi was unsettled. Why did the dreams stop? Did Kakashi do something wrong? He was sure it had something to do with Iruka finding his mask in the last dream.

After over one month of radio silence in his dreams, Kakashi was going insane. He felt an intense urge to do something to get Iruka back into his life. He felt like Fate was trying to send him a message.

There had to be some hint in his last dream of Iruka finding his mask; that dream was different from all the others. Kakashi went through the dream in his head many times, obsessively analyzing every single detail. 

Dream Iruka had just graduated from the academy as a genin, Kakashi could feel the brand new forehead protector on Iruka’s head, and the way Iruka reached his hand up to touch the unblemished metal plate, not a single scratch on it. Had the Iruka in Kakashi’s reality graduated already? 

Kakashi didn’t know, he tried to stay as far away as possible from this universe’s Iruka—but a couple questions to an ANBU colleague that had a little brother in the academy revealed that Iruka’s class was going to graduate next month, on the 16th.

There was only one possible conclusion about the whole thing: Iruka had to find Hound's mask there on the day after his graduation, and the mask wasn't going to go there by itself.

Kakashi had to put his mask there for Iruka to find it.

⁂

It took two full days of grumpy ruminations for Kakashi to stop fighting his natural aversion of fate related assumptions. Then he just accepted what he had to do and went to the shrine to put the mask there. It was easy to find the right step tile—the dream images were photographic in Kakashi’s sharingan memories.

Before burying his Hound mask, Kakashi renewed the chakra imbued in the red elastic thread that Iruka was going to take with him. He felt a tingling in his stomach thinking that Iruka was going to keep close a tiny part of Kakashi with him from now on.

Kakashi patted the tile in place, making sure it stood out a bit from the other tiles, just enough to make someone stumble on it. He went back to his room, trying not to feel anxious over the whole thing.

Nothing happened that night, no Iruka dreams. 

Nothing happened either the following days. 

Kakashi was disappointed; he braced himself to wait until Iruka’s graduation day. Meanwhile he had missions to focus on, fights to fight, people to kill. Those days he missed terribly the time he shared with Iruka and tried to keep focused in his duty.

Graduation day came, finally. Kakashi summoned Pakkun and sent him by the shrine stairs, to stand guard and inform him. Kakashi himself wouldn’t go near real world's Iruka— _that Iruka was not his Iruka_. 

At the end of the day, Pakkun reported that Iruka had stepped on the tile, lifted it, found the mask, got the thread, wrapped it around his wrist, and let the mask under the tile again.

That night Kakashi didn’t dream of kid Iruka finding his mask—dreams never repeated scenes—but he dreamed of adult Iruka, finally. Kakashi felt his tension ease when he found himself inside Iruka’s body on one of his routine teaching days, the classroom around full of deceivingly harmless-looking children. 

At some point Iruka stretched his right arm to point to the diagram of human body chakra channels he’d drawn on the blackboard, and Kakashi’s figurative breath hitched when he noticed for the first time the red thread around Iruka’s wrist. If he focused intensely, he could even feel the soft buzzing of his own chakra against Iruka's skin.

The dream went on unremarkably. Kakashi woke up feeling relaxed for the first time after almost two months of missing Iruka.

But still Kakashi was deeply puzzled and couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened, and trying to make sense of it.

He did the mask thing because of the dream. What would have happened if he wouldn’t have done it? Would the Iruka in his dreamscape stop existing?

Because Kakashi had seen that red thread in his dreams _only after he had_ _actually_ _put it there for Iruka to find, and the Iruka in his dreams never had the thread before._ Or had he, and Kakashi simply didn’t notice? No, Kakashi had ANBU-level observation skills, and he knew it. The red string just wasn't there before.

Those dreams were interacting with the future in a way they weren't supposed to, and Kakashi didn’t know how to process that new information.

⁂

Iruka got home after a long day of teaching, topped with a busy mission room shift, and decided to do a bit of self care with a long relaxing bath. 

When the tub was filled, he closed the tap and started to undress, taking his time, enjoying the whole bathing ritual. Last of all, he carefully unwounded the red elastic thread from his wrist, appreciating it once more. 

This was one of his favorite material possessions, a kind of lucky charm. Some days he wore it around his wrist, others he preferred to use it as a hair tie. He remembered the lucky day he got this red string, how special he felt. Perhaps that day he should have taken the whole mask with him, but then probably someone in ANBU would have tracked him down and made him return it all, so Iruka was proud of his silly younger self taking for once the right decision about something that would still affect him nowadays.

He didn’t know why this little token was so important for him, but he didn’t care. The red string still tingled with a whiff of its owner’s chakra, not strong enough for Iruka to recognize them, but stubbornly reminding him that this was _ANBU’s—_ exciting, dangerous, the stuff of adventure books. Iruka laughed at his own silliness and placed the string on a shelf. He took a quick shower before finally getting into the bathtub with a satisfied sigh, ready to let the stress of his workday dissolve in the rivulets of hot water.

His last thoughts that night before falling asleep were about a dashing ANBU wearing the Hound mask and doing extraordinary missions like the ones in the lame shinobi movies that civilians enjoyed so much, despite their total lack of accuracy.

Then, after he fell asleep, Iruka unknowingly lived the real thing with Hound, once more.


End file.
